


Deus Ex Chalybs

by MisterEAnon



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: (But with some important changes), Clearly Ex Machina inspired, Gen, super powers, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 00:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8080438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisterEAnon/pseuds/MisterEAnon
Summary: After Nick leaves her life, Honey throws herself into her conspiracy-theory work. She gets into a freak accident following a lead, and ends up hearing voices.The really strange part is the voices hear her back. And they do what she tells them to do.





	

Things were never the same after Nick left.

We'd never been a couple, exactly. We were closer to friends with benefits. But even then, he was all I had- The only one I could trust enough in my life to let into my bunker. Into my heart.

And one day, he pushed me away and started hustling without me.

I didn't exactly take it well, the whole 'the only person in my life leaving me' thing. I was passionate about my work educating the masses about the danger of sheep, the conspiracy they were weaving. The imminent Ewepocylpse. But after Nick left, I admit I went a little… Crazy about it.

I went from just trying to educate the masses to actively trying to stop the sheep single-handedly. I researched every lead I could find. I locked myself in my bunker, ordering in canned food and potable water in bulk. I lost myself in my drive to do something important with my life.

One of my fellow online allies mentioned seeing a soft green glow at night at the bottom of the Sahara Square wall. It hadn't been reported as any kind of threat, so maintenance had yet to do anything about it. I knew for sure it had to be an evil device by the Ewes designed to subjugate and control the masses, as all evil devices installed by sheep were intended to do.

I snuck out the same night I heard, following the picture that had been posted with it. It didn't take long to find it, either- Only small safety lights illuminated the bridge, and once I got close enough to investigate, the glow was visible.

It didn't look like any kind of device I'd ever heard of. It was glowing brightly, but the actual illumination it gave off was far less, a soft glow despite the harsh light I saw. It wasn't attached to the wall- It was growing out of it.

I reached towards it to remove it. As I did so, I heard shouting. A maintenance worker had spotted me, and was calling at me from a distance to identify me.

I was turning to face them when the device exploded, taking off what felt like half my face. If I hadn't been looking away, I'm sure I'd have been a lot worse off, if I survived at all.

I know I screamed. A lot of what happened right after that was fuzzy in my mind. Already, the worker was sprinting towards me on all fours, calling into his radio as he rose to two legs.

His radio was calling back. But only I could hear it. I could hear everything- The radio. His phone. My phone.

The city. I could hear the entire city, and it was deafening. I clutched at my bleeding head. It was too much noise, all in my mind and I couldn't block it out. I wanted it to stop.

I needed it to stop. I needed everything to just shut up so I could think.

I needed everything to **SHUT UP**.

I could hear the entire city. And the city could hear me.

Generators turned off. Lights turned off. Automated doors and escalators stopped in place. Everything that thrummed with life and noise stopped.

The city shut up, and I passed out in blissful relief even as the maintenance otter started shouting into his radio.

 

 

 

I got better, of course.

Not unscathed. My fur grew back, but I had new scars that showed even through them. Like circuits in my skin, across the side of my head, between my ear and my eye. They looked kind of like some weird tattoo, which is what I think most people assumed if they didn't look closer.

As I healed, the voices faded away, thankfully. I couldn't hear the city anymore. But I could hear everything in the room. People thought I was schizophrenic when I tried to tell them. They thought I was crazy.

All I knew is I could tell my TV to turn itself on, and it would. Who needs remotes, right? And, as it turned out, I didn't even have to say it out loud, if I didn't want to. After all, machines didn't talk out loud. As far as I could tell, they only talked in my mind. And my mind could talk back, now.

But even as my mind calmed as the voices faded, my body didn't. I developed insomnia. I stayed up at night, building things from spare parts for my bunker and things I felt compelled to take with me when I did venture outside for supplies. My hands picked up tools even as I was half asleep.

I built crazy things. Machines. I assembled parts together without knowing what I was doing. I only know I felt the need to create, to add and add until what I had in my hands was something I could hear- Something I alone could hear.

I disassembled most of them the morning after. It became routine. None the things I made, I could understand. It was safer that way.

Right up until I made what was very clearly a jet-pack with wings. And while I'd like to think I'm a reasonable woman, you just don't turn down a jet-pack. Everyone knows that.

But there was one problem. If I took off in this thing, I wouldn't have any idea how to land. And I'd probably crash straight into a wall. Even if I could build these things, I didn't know how to use them. And while I could freely admit it was a lot easier with whatever you were trying to use mentally talking you through it, I wasn't willing to stake my life on it.

I might have been able to fly, if I dared. But I needed something more. Something to keep me safe when I inevitably crashed into something. The voices in my head had changed my life, but they'd also come pretty damn close to ending it. And I didn't want to risk that happening again.

I had a jet-pack. I wanted armor.

I had a lot of sleepless nights, after that. I could only seem to build when I was half asleep. Only when my conscious mind was mostly checked out could I coax out whatever it was that compelled my paws to move. I didn't know what it was I needed. But when I went out into the city, and I got near something close enough, I could feel it.

I made a lot of strange online purchases, I can tell you that much.

Progress was slow, but steady. As I worked, I learned more about the voices- About my powers. There had to be at least some level of mechanical complexity in an object to be enough of a 'machine' for me to hear. And the more complex it was physically, the more 'complex' its voice could be. Or maybe its mind.

Machines that were constantly streaming information like my TV or my phone had a kind of constant low-level 'chatter'. Things that were were either still or in motion, like automatic windows on cars, tended to be quiet when they weren't in use, and only 'spoke up' when they were active.

But there was one thing I had noticed, in everything I could hear. From the simplest mechanical minds to the most advanced I ever passed by, there was one unifying theme: Machines, like people, wanted to be useful.

And as I spent my days collecting tools and materials, and my nights constructing in a daze, I realized that I wanted to be useful, too. Ever since the accident, I had done nothing but live and build. The accident only happened because I was trying to do something with my life.

It hadn't really worked out all that well the first time, but I guessed a second shot couldn't hurt. Not as much as the first one had, at least.

Piece by piece, my armor came together. I only had a vague idea of something to keep me from cutting myself open if I flew into a sharp edge, but as servos and joints came together, it really ended up looking like a set of real armor. Parts 'woke up' as they became mechanically functional, and I listened as I turned them over in my hands.

They taught me how they worked. And I took them apart, and put them back together in the most efficient design possible, with what I had. They barely had a voice at all, when they were so simple. But I still heard enough.

I heard gratitude. They were happy to be better. As I worked, I realized how much I liked making things better. As my armor came together, I realized there was really only option left for my future that would leave me satisfied:

I was going to go out into Zootopia and help people. The sheep may spread the seeds for crime, sowing discontent to keep the population distracted and vulnerable, but I could go out and stop all of that. And maybe, once people were free from that oppression, they could open their eyes and see as I had.

Parts came together. As they linked together, they lost their individuality, becoming a single machine with a single voice. And I was given another motivation to finish my work in the progress: My armor was awake. And it was discontent. It didn't like being unfinished, useless. It wasn't complete enough to truly hate, as far as I could tell.

And soon, it was finished enough. The itch in my mind that compelled me to build wanted more. Radio. Weapons. More adding, more changing, more modification. But I pushed away the newest part of my mind with impatience.

All of that could wait. I wanted to fly.

 

 

 

Everything checked out.

I had listened to my jet-pack, built what felt like months ago, and built it to be more efficient, when I integrated it into my armor. It was custom fit for my body, of course. Even though the armor's limbs moved in sync with my own, there was no kind of computer control installed in it yet, if ever.

I heard it, and it heard me. I had learned from it as I brought it into existence, and it was learning from me, now. It listened to my mind, and our motions synchronized. We remained separate, but there was a certain unity in our mutual understanding.

I took a deep breath, and launched into the air.

It was terrifying, blasting off into the air. It was too fast, too much, not enough control. But even as I thought about it, the wings on my back heard me, and obeyed. The thrust decreased, and I spun in circles before I learned how to turn without corkscrewing.

I laughed into the night sky, even as I wobbled unsteadily through the air, still learning how to hold my posture for a smooth flight. I was graceless, uncertain, and had to pay constant attention to the feedback of my armor as it burned fuel.

I loved it. There was nothing comparable to flying under your own power. And I could feel how happy the machine on my back and around my body felt. I don't know if it was from the joy of flight, or from the fulfillment of being truly, unambiguously useful, but I knew it shared my joy in a lesser, simpler manner.

My jet-pack could teach me how to fly. But nothing inherent in the mechanics of how it worked could teach me how to land.

I didn't quite land on my face. But I did end up skidding across the ground on my front and nearly rammed my head into my bunker.

I ended up grinning anyway.

 

 

 

I kept building after that. My armor got radio, and then wireless integration to my phone. Pneumatic gauntlets for enhanced physical force application. Or, well, punching harder. And then, integrated tasers in the hands on top of that. I couldn't imagine running into any street crime that could possibly require more than that.

There was still a part of me that wanted to keep building, keep improving. I wasn't sure if it would ever go away, especially since with every integrated part and system, my creation became just a bit more alive. I was proud of it, and I loved the way it got smarter bit by bit, even if I was the only one who could hear it.

But all of that was in the past, now. I had reflected on what happened to me a lot since the accident, and most of that was while I was still recovering from the explosion with singed fur.

But as I stepped into my armor, feeling it seal around me and hearing it's 'voice' in my mind confirm that every part was ready for operation, I knew I was ready to face the future.

I took off, and only wobbled a little in the air before straightening out.

 

 

 

It turns out, it's easy to startle off a lot of petty criminals if you fall right out of the sky and land in front of them.

I locked the leg joints, falling right onto my armored feet and letting the shock absorbers take the impact instead of my knees. I wasn't falling from terminal velocity, either, and the armor was more than capable of taking it.

The first time I landed, the car-jacker I was coming to deter took one look at me and had the sense to bolt. And so had the purse-snatcher I dropped down on after that… Along with the owner of the dropped purse.

I made a pretty imposing figure: I wasn't as big as a lion or anything, but a mechanized suit of armor falling from the sky was apparently threatening enough on it's own. I had neglected to paint it, so it was a dull metal gray. Maybe I'd start customizing it once I figured out a regular patrol route.

It wasn't long before something caught my attention. I had my police scanner on, since that kind of technology was publicly accessible, and I caught a report of gun fire being noticed in a darker part of town.

Guns were relatively rare. They were restricted, and with the wild variation in body sizes between species, a little bit impractical. Only the serious kinds of criminals would carry them.

The police would be investigating soon. But I would get the faster, because the police couldn't fly.

 

 

 

I didn't just drop from the sky, this time. I made a slightly more graceful landing by just decreasing the thrust from my jet-pack so it slowed my fall, letting me land on my feet almost slowly enough to be described as a soft landing. I was getting the hang of this.

It didn't take me long to find the trouble, since I could just follow the sound of the gunshots. I ran at full tilt, using thrust from my jet-pack to gain speed while remaining on the ground.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing: An actual sheep, taking periodic pot-shots at a pig who had hidden behind a dumpster in an alley. And he wouldn't be safe there for long, as the wooly bully as advancing on him. I was speechless that the sheep would actually be terrorizing the streets directly in addition to their devious plots.

Then, I got angry, and slowly, steadily clomped toward him. My metal armor added an ominous sound to my steps I appreciated.

The sheep turned at the sound, took one look at me, and reflexively fired. The bullet whizzed past me. I didn't think it would get through my armor, if he did land a shot on me. And I wasn't eager to find out.

It was a good thing I didn't have to leave that up to chance, then. I glared at the gun, and ordered it to **JAM.**

The ram pulled the gun up to his weird evil slit eyes, looked down the sights, and pulled the trigger. There was nothing but a click.

I grinned, even though it wasn't apparent under my faceplate. I continued to stalk towards him even as he pulled the trigger over and over, shaking with fear. I was loving the chance to strike fear into the heart of an evildoer, instead of letting them do the same to innocent civilians.

When I had walked right up in front of him, he panicked and tried to pistol-whip me. I watched it glance off my frame, and the jolt made him drop the useless, jammed gun.

“My turn,” I rumbled.

**TASERS TO 10.**

Electricity arced violently between my fists as I went right to the top setting, and I delivered an electric hay-maker straight into his gut. He convulsed, falling down and continuing to violently jerk on the ground.

As an afterthought, I reared back and kicked him in the junk with my servo-enhanced leg, making him black out from the pain almost immediately. He was just lucky I didn't have dedicated force-multiplication systems in my legs yet.

Can never be too careful with these damn sheep.

I turned around, finding the pig still cowering behind the dumpster. I don't know who he was, or why the sheep was trying to kill him. I assumed it was because he'd discovered something critical that the Ileweminati couldn't afford to get out. I was sure a true justice seeker like himself would surely release such news online once he was at a secure location. “Are you alright?”

He seemed speechless with fear. He must not have been prepared to see the true horror of a sheep in the wool.

I glanced back at the sheep lying insensate on the ground. “You should probably call the police on that guy.”

He stared at me. I stared at him. A few seconds went by before he seemed to understand, fishing out a phone from his pocket.

I lifted off from the middle of the alley, already ready to go protect more innocent civilians. I didn't even manage to leave the street before my second real encounter happened: I was sailing overhead when an otter crashed through the front door of a seedy looking bar, crying out as he slammed into the building across the street.

That looked like it hurt. I touched down once more, landing between the otter and the front door. A few seconds later, his assailant stomped out to face me: A particularly large rhino. And he looked pissed.

I was still feeling pretty fucking incredible from my fight with the sheep, if you could call it that. I had dominated that woolly bastard. “Hey, jackass. So, you want to call the cops yourself, or do you want me to do it for you after I kick your butt?”

He snorted, still approaching me. It was a lot like how I had stalked down that sheep, actually. But this was different. I let him get just close enough, and lunged forward. My pneumatic gauntlets activated, and I punched him with mechanically enhanced strength.

He stumbled, and glared at me. Oh. That… Hadn't worked.

But I wasn't out of options yet. **TASERS TO 10.**

I repeated my finishing move from my battle with the sheep, a solid hay-maker swing coupled with an electric shock straight into his stomach.

He winced with pain. But only for a moment, because he wasn't incapacitated, and only a second after I connected, he landed his own hit on me.

He was stronger. I went flying- I wasn't as light as the otter had been by a long-shot, but I was a lot closer to the building behind me in the middle of the street. My back slammed into the brick wall.

The good news was that my armor had taken the brunt of the force.

The bad news was also that my armor had taken the brunt of the force, and now my jet-pack was kind of toast. And he was still thudding toward me menacingly, obviously in no rush. He knew he could just throw me down and stomp on me until my armor cracked.

I knew it, too. NOW I was out of options. I started to panic- I thought one of my leg servos was dented. I could hammer it back into place enough to get home, if I had time. But I didn't. I was out of time, and more or less gimped into place.

My mind raced. I was in a city. I cast my thoughts out, listening for anything that could hear me. Traffic lights. Cars. Pay phones-

Wait. I glanced around. There was a car big enough in the street. It was a massive beast of a truck, and I had a sneaking suspicion it belonged to the guy about to squish me flat in my own armor.

Hopefully, it would be as much of a dick as it's owner.

** RUN THAT GUY OVER DO IT NOW DO IT NOW DO IT NOW- **

The rhino turned his head as the engine of the car roared to life without anyone inside, and only managed to stumble back a few steps before it shot forward and knocked him over, peeling out at max speed from a parked position.

** REVERSE AND DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN- **

I hit him with the car a few more times, until his head knocked into the pavement hard enough to knock him out.

I grunted as I sat up, wincing. Hell, I was going to be feeling my back in the morning. I started to turn around to limp off when I noticed the rhino's original victim was up and staring at me. I had almost forgotten about the otter.

He was staring at me with astonishment. “Holy shit… You saved me. You're a fucking hero, man!” he told me, as if he didn't quite believe it.

I laughed. It came out as more of a wheeze. “Not yet,” I murmured back. “Do me a favor and get outta here. I need a little privacy to fix this thing,” I mumbled back. He nodded uncertainly as I limped into a nearby alley.

I didn't have any tools on me. The most I could do was step out of the armor, and knock the limping leg against a wall with my arms to knock the servo back into alignment. That fixed the leg, for now, but there was nothing I could do about my jet-pack out here.

I grumbled as I walked off. There was something decidedly uncool about having to walk home after a night of being a superhero.

 

 

 

I slumped back against my couch, out of my armor. One good thing about my powers is that I could just tell my armor to climb itself up onto my workshop table and it would, which was why it was up there now.

My first night on patrol had started off really strongly. And ended… Less so. I had only really ever designed my armor's weaponry to deal with low-level criminal scum my own size. I hadn't really anticipated trying to square off with someone so much bigger than me.

If I was going to keep up the whole hero business, I was going to have to keep building, and think of something more effective. I was lucky that there was a car around big enough to run over such a massive mammal when I needed it. I couldn't rely on luck.

What I had set out to do… It was dangerous. Really fucking dangerous. But the idea of going out there and making a difference by saving people and putting a stop to the evil plots of the Ewe World Order just felt right. And the feeling of flying through the sky with a machine I trusted as a friend felt even better.

I rolled over on my couch. I started to drift off, and I could feel the restlessness in my paws, urging me to build. But I resisted effortlessly, because I knew that would be the first thing I did tomorrow.

As my consciousness faded into sleep, the compulsion in the back of my mind changed. I didn't build- Instead, my thoughts reached out, and turned on my radio with my powers. Instead of my usual station, static played instead, slowly dialing in on some new Nirfauna song. I'd never heard of it before.

By the time I truly fell asleep, the only lyrics I could remember were about how the stars were down.

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously struggled to name this thing. It's a cross between Deus Ex Machina, from the Ex Machina crossover bit, and with the latin translation for Steel, with inspiration from John Henry Irons.
> 
> Well, Ferrum also translates to iron, but what can you do.
> 
> Edit: someone told me Chalybs is a better translation for steel.


End file.
